Chapter Text
Furina comes into her apartment, shuts the door behind her, and switches on the light.
Perhaps she takes her heeled shoes off and leaves them by the door. Perhaps she forgets today, as she tends to lately.
She goes to the little kitchen with its worn, wooden countertops and stone tiled floor. She puts down the paper grocery bags of tinned vegetables, pasta, condensed milk, and the like—the bounty of an afternoon out at the market. They rustle and slump against each other, and she looks plainly at them, then turns away.
She cannot be bothered to put them away, can't muster the purpose to carefully sort each can and box by content, painstakingly stack every container: base atop lid, base atop lid, and, with the greatest attention to detail, kneel by the lone chair at the kitchen table and arrange the groceries inside the cabinets under the counter. She doesn't feel like it, not right now. Maybe in a little while.
She removes her hat, tugs her mismatched gloves off, brushes her fingers over the sleeves of the light overcoat with its long and flowing train. She faintly remembers primping and preening the day it was tailored for her, the seamstress beaming in bashful pride and admiration as the Lady Furina de Fontaine turned from side to side, gasping and admiring the swishing, ribboned ruffles in the mirror as they trailed behind her.
How tiresome it all seems now.
In this small and humble room in the heart of the Court of Fontaine, so close to and yet so far from the opulent beauty and towering majesty of the Palais Mermonia, Furina shrugs off the coat and leaves it on the kitchen table. She should hang it properly in the wardrobe, she knows, or it will get wrinkled. She considers it briefly, but can't bring herself to care enough.
She pads from the small kitchen-slash-sitting room to her bedroom and slips under the covers. The pillow is smooth and cool under her cheek. She curls up on her side like a small child, covering herself completely under the blanket.
It was a quiet day, she thinks to herself. People hadn't pointed and gawped as openly as they used to, when she'd just started doing her shopping and running some errands. All Lady Furina this, Lady Furina that.
A young boy holding onto his mother's wrist, staring in unabashed awe: The Archon eats macaroni too?
She's not the Archon anymore, now hush that mouth or the Patrol will come and get you.
Her cheeks had burned the first time, her hands trembling so much she'd dropped her coin purse and sent tiny discs of gold sprawling, spinning every which way.
Oh my, the shopkeeper had said with concern, are you alright, Lady Furina?
She'd knelt and picked up the coins, handing over the payment for the contents of her shopping basket without an answer for the question.
Nothing of that sort had happened this afternoon. It'd been almost peaceful in its mundanity, and in the daily song and dance of the Court of Fontaine, Furina played the part of just another citizen: browsing the shops lined up prettily along every wide and well-paved street; breaking off bits of bread to feed the doves that flocked round the benches; flipping through the papers hawked by the newsies who congregated by the great, poised statue with its ever-rotating rings in the central plaza of the Vasari Passage.
She watched clouds overhead; the day passed. It was simple. It was easy.
Time ever-ticking, space ever-shifting, all to herself. Peace and quiet. An opera house with every seat full of air.
Isn't this what she had silently prayed for through five unendurable centuries?
And yet now, when Furina tucks herself under the blanket and pulls her hair away from her neck, she can't find it in herself to smile or breathe a sigh of relief. She digs deep and can't find any so-called wellspring of joy in her heart, not even a trickle. The sheets are cold and her hands are colder. She presses an icy fingertip against the side of her neck and tries to find her pulse, tries to remind herself that she is alive, alive, alive.
Without the vast, echoing stage and burning-hot spotlights, without the sea of people murmuring in conspiracy and screaming in adulation, who is she?
She closes her eyes and deconstructs herself in her mind, dismantling herself piece by piece like one of the whirring, clicking mechanical contraptions that are so beloved in this city that has surrounded her.
What does this girl named Furina like to do in her free time? Which section does she linger at in a bookstore, a florist, a confectionery? Does she wake early or late, does she drink floral tea or bitter herbal? Does she prefer the sky rainy or sunny on a given day? What tune does she hum when she comes home in the evening?
The thought flashes unbidden: where does she even call home?
It is a painful question. She puts it away for later, maybe. She thinks in the back of her head that she might never get around to it.
She can see the rest of her future playing out like this: vaguely pleasant pastimes that she never really looks forward to, polite nods to strangers on the street who still shy away from her a little, afternoon cups of tea that she can't quite remember the taste of.
It makes her want to storm out of bed and shatter things on the floor and wreck the walls. It makes her want to cry and wrap herself into a cocoon of blankets and never come out again. It makes her want to rush into the street and scream at full force, at the top of her lungs, with every breath of air, all agonizing urgency and inconsolable incoherency, until her throat tears and she loses all sensation, if only to make someone recognize her, and say, I know who you are.
She wants to be known, she realizes. She wants to be found.
Perhaps Furina cries then, bitter and silent, having laid bare the truth of her heart.
Unconsciously, she hopes with all her might that someone would knock at the door and draw her out, sit with her and be witness to the desperation swallowing her, see her and understand. A longtime companion. A distant acquaintance. A complete stranger. Anyone would do.
But the god of this land is dead, and there is no one to hear her.
After a time, she gets out of bed and begins to put the groceries away. What else is there? No one is going to do it for her.